Memorandums have less prominence than treaties so the public relations cost to ignoring them is indeed smaller.
With NATO, everyone understands that an attack on a NATO country will involve American reprisals
Only if President Obama wanted to initiate reprisals, and does everyone know that he would? Yes, he would certainly do something symbolic, but would he take military action against Russia if Russia, say, decided to take back Estonia? I would give it less than a 50% chance. If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
Memorandums have less prominence than treaties so the public relations cost to ignoring them is indeed smaller.
When something doesn’t oblige one to do something, and everyone understands that well in advance, then yes, the PR hit from not doing that something is indeed small… You gain a reputation as a promise-breaker by breaking promises.
Yes, he would certainly do something symbolic, but would he take military action against Russia if Russia, say, decided to take back Estonia?
He has to, or else the US empire collapses worldwide: the US holds very few territories outright, it depends on host countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, who generally have defense clauses just like NATO and allow & subsidize the US bases in part to benefit from mutual defense clauses. If a NATO country is invaded without a real defense, then America’s credibility goes up in smoke. The day after the invasion, just in East Asia: SK restarts its nuke program, NK begins extorting more from SK under the threat of invasion, Japan begins a covert nuke program and begins the process of expelling the US from Okinawa (a long-running sore in their domestic politics justifiable only as part of the US nuclear umbrella, and a solution which costs the US much of its capabilities against China), and so on and so forth.
If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
Oh yes. And that’s in part why Ukraine was never allowed to join NATO: too close to Russia.
He has to, or else the US empire collapses worldwide:
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
You are right that Russia taking Estonia would cause lots of countries to acquire nuclear weapons. No doubt high tech countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea have plans in place to very quickly get them.
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
We may judge him by his actions: infuriating many left-wing intellectuals by now-6 years of straight-line continuation and expansion of Bush-era policies with regard to national security and empire-building.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
‘But I doubt that letting Russia take the Ukraine would cause any collapse of US credibility abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.’
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
I like your posts and comments a lot more when you refrain from the unfortunate rhetoric. It also would be nice to step away from the politics proper and get back to the topic of calibrating one’s certainties.
I like your posts and comments a lot more when you refrain from the unfortunate rhetoric.
Our estimate of Putin’s estimate of Obama’s view on the U.S. empire is critical to calibrating our beliefs. Lots of leftwing intellectuals really, really do think that the U.S. empire is an evil, imperialist force (do you doubt that they believe this?). To calibrate our beliefs we need to figure out with what probability Putin thinks Obama has this view.
I, and presumably shminux as well, though that you were claiming that there’s actually a good chance that Obama actually does want to see the American ‘empire’ collapse, not that Putin thought that he would.
To calibrate our beliefs we need to figure out with what probability Putin thinks Obama has this view.
Yes, assuming it’s one of the many issues Putin pays any attention to. What are the odds of Putin even considering the possibility that Obama might be a hidden left-wing anti-patriotic conspirator whose main agenda is to break the evil US empire? This is an easy question to answer. Presumably Putin is to the left of the “left-wing intellectuals” with his views on the evilness of the US empire, right? And actual US “anti-patriotic” left-wingers certainly don’t consider Obama one of them, judging by the amount of criticism they fling at him. So Putin almost surely sees Obama as the current symbol of US imperialism trying to prevent Russia from exercising its rights to protect Russian citizens in formerly Russian territories. He may well think that he is weak and try to take advantage of it, but he certainly does not think that Obama is secretly anti-american, no more than he thinks that Obama is secretly Kenyan. My guess is that you think this is an option worth considering because of your own political views, which are obviously anti-Obama. This leads to a selection bias where you exaggerate the likelihood of negligible-probability alternatives related to the views you disagree with.
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire. Lots of Republicans think that Obama wants to greatly reduce U.S. military power, so why is it silly to think that Putin might think that Obama wants to do so?
but he certainly does not think that Obama is secretly anti-american,
I take it you don’t have much experience talking with leftwing college professors. It’s far from implausible to think that deep down Obama believes that U.S. military power has, with the exception of WWII, been a force for evil.
Putin is former KGB and the KGB had a long history of getting leftwing intellectuals to spy for them because the intellectuals disliked the West. (I do not believe that Obama is or ever has been a spy.)
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire.
Clearly. And for a good reason, given how Afghanistan has always been resistant to external aggression and Iraq was Bush and Cheney’s pet project, unrelated to 9/11.
Lots of Republicans think that Obama wants to greatly reduce U.S. military power
What do they think his motivation would be, other than possibly financial?
I take it you don’t have much experience talking with leftwing college professors.
Some. The ex-hippie Berkeley types are rather annoying. Krugman is annoying. But to me any ideologically-motivated argument is annoying, because of its anti-rationality.
It’s far from implausible to think that deep down Obama believes that U.S. military power has, with the exception of WWII, been a force for evil.
Eh, I don’t see the connection. The leftwingers rarely hide their views. Obama has never expressed anything close to what you are describing and hasn’t worked for any radical leftwing organizations (beyond a tenants’ rights organization during his college years). He certainly supported left-leaning causes, like healthcare and welfare reforms, in the past, but he still does so, pretty openly. I grant you that his expressed views and actions have shifted rightward, and his actual views might be closer to what he held 15 years ago, but still solidly within the spectrum of DNC views. The odds of him considering the US military power being (a force for evil), given that he never expressed views like that, are pretty slim. Not that I personally approve of his policies and actions, the man has been a disappointment in terms of his competence level. But inept does not mean malicious.
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire.
If Iraq was ever part of the U.S. empire, we might have done what it took to govern it, and would be getting cheap oil from Iraq, which I thought was just a fantasy of the left. Maybe you’d like the U.S. to act as an old fashioned Empire, but nobody except maybe Dick Cheney wants to do that. It might work but I doubt it, but most important it has no chance of happening and if part of your critique of Obama is that he’s not an old fashioned imperialist, I think Teddy Roosevelt might have been the last American one.
Putin is former KGB and the KGB had a long history of getting leftwing intellectuals to spy for them because the intellectuals disliked the West.
Today’s “left wing” intellectuals are blatherers. Postmodernism is anti-Enlightenment and views Marxism as an unfortunate result of the Enlightenment the same as capitalism. Noam Chomsky calls himself an anarchist. They tend to be anti-everything when it comes to actually doing something. And Obama is certainly nothing like that crowd. There is no international Communist movement, and there’s been virtually none since Brezhnev, though the USSR ran around trying to buy a lot of countries. If you want a clear picture of the era of “Red Intellectuals”, read Witness by Whittaker Chambers, and then I suggest Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America by Ted Morgan (despite the subtitle, McCarthyism is less than half of what the book covers). Chambers was the star witness for Nixon’s “pumpkin papers” trial. Both cover a lot of just how deep the international Communist movement got into America, and Chambers writes beautifully and helps you to see why that was. He also speaks for the many who became deeply disillusioned by the Hitler-Stalin pact. I used to think that was odd because in my view it was a very natural reaction to Chamberlain’s Munich, but the Communists really did put up a very good show of defining and opposing the Fascists (I say “a good show” for a reason but it’s too complicated to say more), and for as long as that was true, a lot of people put a halo on them for that, then many of them because naively heartbroken.
Our estimate of Putin’s estimate of Obama’s view on the U.S. empire is critical to calibrating our beliefs.
That is true, and how much of Putin’s estimate of Obama is due to relentless right-wing propaganda saying he’s weak on everything?
I’m not convinced he’s failed to do anything useful that say GWB would have done (or any up and coming GOP leader). I think a big problem we have now is we’re in umpteen situations in which there’s hardly any clear cut winning move.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power
In Eastern Europe, the pro-Russian people would be like: “See? The West is toothless; Russia will regain her former sphere of influence soon (which includes us).” And people have an instinct to side with the winner, so the people who don’t have strong political opinions would be likely to join what seems like a winning side.
The map drawn at Yalta Conference was a Schelling point for decades. People still remember it.
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse.
I don’t think their views on the subject are terribly coherent. The calls to stop being the world’s policeman are intertwined with calls to intervene for “appropriate” humanitarian causes. Hard isolationism is a rarity nowadays, I think.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
If Russia takes a NATO country and the US doesn’t intervene then US troops obviously don’t act as tripwires. This implies that the US is an unreliable ally, which would prompt the other NATO members to say a big “fuck you” to the US and take defense on their own hands, which would include turning Europe into the Fourth Reich, rebuilding the Japanese Empire, some countries preemptively siding with Russia, and so on.
Consider two reasons the U.S. has for protecting a country from Russia or China. (1) Because of some document signed a long time ago. (2) Because we would lose a lot if that country fell under the control of Russia or China.
(2) has always been a lot more important than (1). The dead hand of the past is a lot weaker than it seems in international relations.
Having the Germans and Japanese spend more money on their military would benefit the United States. If I were Putin I would consider the main downside of taking Estonia being that German would respond by militarizing.
Part of the EU constitution is about mutual self defense. The EU almost certainly would defend their own territory. Staying out of the conflict wouldn’t be only a betrayal of Estonia but a betrayal of every EU country.
If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
If Ukraine would be in NATO game then attacking the “rebels” in Ukraine would be fair game just as the US attacks ISIS via airstrikes in Iraq.
Memorandums have less prominence than treaties so the public relations cost to ignoring them is indeed smaller.
Only if President Obama wanted to initiate reprisals, and does everyone know that he would? Yes, he would certainly do something symbolic, but would he take military action against Russia if Russia, say, decided to take back Estonia? I would give it less than a 50% chance. If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
When something doesn’t oblige one to do something, and everyone understands that well in advance, then yes, the PR hit from not doing that something is indeed small… You gain a reputation as a promise-breaker by breaking promises.
He has to, or else the US empire collapses worldwide: the US holds very few territories outright, it depends on host countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, who generally have defense clauses just like NATO and allow & subsidize the US bases in part to benefit from mutual defense clauses. If a NATO country is invaded without a real defense, then America’s credibility goes up in smoke. The day after the invasion, just in East Asia: SK restarts its nuke program, NK begins extorting more from SK under the threat of invasion, Japan begins a covert nuke program and begins the process of expelling the US from Okinawa (a long-running sore in their domestic politics justifiable only as part of the US nuclear umbrella, and a solution which costs the US much of its capabilities against China), and so on and so forth.
Oh yes. And that’s in part why Ukraine was never allowed to join NATO: too close to Russia.
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
You are right that Russia taking Estonia would cause lots of countries to acquire nuclear weapons. No doubt high tech countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea have plans in place to very quickly get them.
We may judge him by his actions: infuriating many left-wing intellectuals by now-6 years of straight-line continuation and expansion of Bush-era policies with regard to national security and empire-building.
‘But I doubt that letting Russia take the Ukraine would cause any collapse of US credibility abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.’
I think the last paragraph is true, although I recognize that you probably do not.
I like your posts and comments a lot more when you refrain from the unfortunate rhetoric. It also would be nice to step away from the politics proper and get back to the topic of calibrating one’s certainties.
Our estimate of Putin’s estimate of Obama’s view on the U.S. empire is critical to calibrating our beliefs. Lots of leftwing intellectuals really, really do think that the U.S. empire is an evil, imperialist force (do you doubt that they believe this?). To calibrate our beliefs we need to figure out with what probability Putin thinks Obama has this view.
I, and presumably shminux as well, though that you were claiming that there’s actually a good chance that Obama actually does want to see the American ‘empire’ collapse, not that Putin thought that he would.
Yes, assuming it’s one of the many issues Putin pays any attention to. What are the odds of Putin even considering the possibility that Obama might be a hidden left-wing anti-patriotic conspirator whose main agenda is to break the evil US empire? This is an easy question to answer. Presumably Putin is to the left of the “left-wing intellectuals” with his views on the evilness of the US empire, right? And actual US “anti-patriotic” left-wingers certainly don’t consider Obama one of them, judging by the amount of criticism they fling at him. So Putin almost surely sees Obama as the current symbol of US imperialism trying to prevent Russia from exercising its rights to protect Russian citizens in formerly Russian territories. He may well think that he is weak and try to take advantage of it, but he certainly does not think that Obama is secretly anti-american, no more than he thinks that Obama is secretly Kenyan. My guess is that you think this is an option worth considering because of your own political views, which are obviously anti-Obama. This leads to a selection bias where you exaggerate the likelihood of negligible-probability alternatives related to the views you disagree with.
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire. Lots of Republicans think that Obama wants to greatly reduce U.S. military power, so why is it silly to think that Putin might think that Obama wants to do so?
I take it you don’t have much experience talking with leftwing college professors. It’s far from implausible to think that deep down Obama believes that U.S. military power has, with the exception of WWII, been a force for evil.
Putin is former KGB and the KGB had a long history of getting leftwing intellectuals to spy for them because the intellectuals disliked the West. (I do not believe that Obama is or ever has been a spy.)
Clearly. And for a good reason, given how Afghanistan has always been resistant to external aggression and Iraq was Bush and Cheney’s pet project, unrelated to 9/11.
What do they think his motivation would be, other than possibly financial?
Some. The ex-hippie Berkeley types are rather annoying. Krugman is annoying. But to me any ideologically-motivated argument is annoying, because of its anti-rationality.
Eh, I don’t see the connection. The leftwingers rarely hide their views. Obama has never expressed anything close to what you are describing and hasn’t worked for any radical leftwing organizations (beyond a tenants’ rights organization during his college years). He certainly supported left-leaning causes, like healthcare and welfare reforms, in the past, but he still does so, pretty openly. I grant you that his expressed views and actions have shifted rightward, and his actual views might be closer to what he held 15 years ago, but still solidly within the spectrum of DNC views. The odds of him considering the US military power being (a force for evil), given that he never expressed views like that, are pretty slim. Not that I personally approve of his policies and actions, the man has been a disappointment in terms of his competence level. But inept does not mean malicious.
If Iraq was ever part of the U.S. empire, we might have done what it took to govern it, and would be getting cheap oil from Iraq, which I thought was just a fantasy of the left. Maybe you’d like the U.S. to act as an old fashioned Empire, but nobody except maybe Dick Cheney wants to do that. It might work but I doubt it, but most important it has no chance of happening and if part of your critique of Obama is that he’s not an old fashioned imperialist, I think Teddy Roosevelt might have been the last American one.
Today’s “left wing” intellectuals are blatherers. Postmodernism is anti-Enlightenment and views Marxism as an unfortunate result of the Enlightenment the same as capitalism. Noam Chomsky calls himself an anarchist. They tend to be anti-everything when it comes to actually doing something. And Obama is certainly nothing like that crowd. There is no international Communist movement, and there’s been virtually none since Brezhnev, though the USSR ran around trying to buy a lot of countries. If you want a clear picture of the era of “Red Intellectuals”, read Witness by Whittaker Chambers, and then I suggest Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America by Ted Morgan (despite the subtitle, McCarthyism is less than half of what the book covers). Chambers was the star witness for Nixon’s “pumpkin papers” trial. Both cover a lot of just how deep the international Communist movement got into America, and Chambers writes beautifully and helps you to see why that was. He also speaks for the many who became deeply disillusioned by the Hitler-Stalin pact. I used to think that was odd because in my view it was a very natural reaction to Chamberlain’s Munich, but the Communists really did put up a very good show of defining and opposing the Fascists (I say “a good show” for a reason but it’s too complicated to say more), and for as long as that was true, a lot of people put a halo on them for that, then many of them because naively heartbroken.
That is true, and how much of Putin’s estimate of Obama is due to relentless right-wing propaganda saying he’s weak on everything?
I’m not convinced he’s failed to do anything useful that say GWB would have done (or any up and coming GOP leader). I think a big problem we have now is we’re in umpteen situations in which there’s hardly any clear cut winning move.
In Eastern Europe, the pro-Russian people would be like: “See? The West is toothless; Russia will regain her former sphere of influence soon (which includes us).” And people have an instinct to side with the winner, so the people who don’t have strong political opinions would be likely to join what seems like a winning side.
The map drawn at Yalta Conference was a Schelling point for decades. People still remember it.
I don’t think their views on the subject are terribly coherent. The calls to stop being the world’s policeman are intertwined with calls to intervene for “appropriate” humanitarian causes. Hard isolationism is a rarity nowadays, I think.
If Russia takes a NATO country and the US doesn’t intervene then US troops obviously don’t act as tripwires. This implies that the US is an unreliable ally, which would prompt the other NATO members to say a big “fuck you” to the US and take defense on their own hands, which would include turning Europe into the Fourth Reich, rebuilding the Japanese Empire, some countries preemptively siding with Russia, and so on.
Consider two reasons the U.S. has for protecting a country from Russia or China. (1) Because of some document signed a long time ago. (2) Because we would lose a lot if that country fell under the control of Russia or China.
(2) has always been a lot more important than (1). The dead hand of the past is a lot weaker than it seems in international relations.
Having the Germans and Japanese spend more money on their military would benefit the United States. If I were Putin I would consider the main downside of taking Estonia being that German would respond by militarizing.
Part of the EU constitution is about mutual self defense. The EU almost certainly would defend their own territory. Staying out of the conflict wouldn’t be only a betrayal of Estonia but a betrayal of every EU country.
If Ukraine would be in NATO game then attacking the “rebels” in Ukraine would be fair game just as the US attacks ISIS via airstrikes in Iraq.